Netflix’s CEO Just Launched a $100 Million Education Fund. (Got Any Recommendations on How He Should Spend It?

Jan 13, 2016

BECAUSE YOU INVESTED: Got any suggestions for how Reed Hastings should spend this money?

The chief executive of Netflix took to Facebook to announce a “new $100 million philanthropic fund for education, creatively named the Hastings Fund, through the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.” The fund’s first two grantees—the United Negro College Fund and the Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley—will receive a total of $1.5 million to “support college education of Black and Latino youth,” he wrote.

Neerav Kingsland, a senior fellow at the Arnold Foundation and former CEO of New Schools for New Orleans, will manage the fund.

Hasting’s largesse is the latest in a string of high-profile philanthropic commitments from Silicon Valley elites—most notably Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s $45 billion pledge to social causes. But Hastings is a familiar face among the the charter and edtech communities: he’s given money to Khan Academy and invested in DreamBox, an adaptive math instructional tool, and Rocketship Education, a network of charter schools with sites in Washington DC, Milwaukee, Nashville and the San Francisco Bay Area. EducationNext has profiled his bustling involvement in the education space.

Netflix’s CEO Just Launched a $100 Million Education Fund. (Got Any Recommendations on How He Should Spend It?

Jan 13, 2016

BECAUSE YOU INVESTED: Got any suggestions for how Reed Hastings should spend this money?

The chief executive of Netflix took to Facebook to announce a “new $100 million philanthropic fund for education, creatively named the Hastings Fund, through the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.” The fund’s first two grantees—the United Negro College Fund and the Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley—will receive a total of $1.5 million to “support college education of Black and Latino youth,” he wrote.

Neerav Kingsland, a senior fellow at the Arnold Foundation and former CEO of New Schools for New Orleans, will manage the fund.

Hasting’s largesse is the latest in a string of high-profile philanthropic commitments from Silicon Valley elites—most notably Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s $45 billion pledge to social causes. But Hastings is a familiar face among the the charter and edtech communities: he’s given money to Khan Academy and invested in DreamBox, an adaptive math instructional tool, and Rocketship Education, a network of charter schools with sites in Washington DC, Milwaukee, Nashville and the San Francisco Bay Area. EducationNext has profiled his bustling involvement in the education space.